New "Pinocchio" Animated Movie Will Be Directed by Guillermo del Toro

It will be a stop-motion musical.

Guillermo del Toro’s last film, The Shape of Water, earned him Oscars for best picture and best director. With that kind of clout, he can basically do anything he wants next. So it’s no surprise that the Mexican auteur has chosen one of his passion projects as a follow-up. According to Variety, Guillermo will produce, write, and direct a stop-motion musical version of Pinocchio for Netflix.

“No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio,” Guillermo said in a statement to Variety. “In our story, Pinocchio is an innocent soul with an uncaring father who gets lost in a world he cannot comprehend. He embarks on an extraordinary journey that leaves him with a deep understanding of his father and the real world. I’ve wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember.”

With his uncanny ability to combine childlike wonder with elements of the macabre, Guillermo is the perfect choice to bring the iconic puppet, whose one dream is to become a human boy, to life. And while the popular Disney version is beloved by children, the original 1883 novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio, by Italian writer Carlo Collodi, is darker than some people may realize. Guillermo’s version — which will be set in Italy during the 1930s, during the rise of Mussolini’s fascism — will likely revisit some of the darker aspects of the source material.

Netflix's Pinocchio is just the latest example of major studios hopping on the nostalgia trend. After the huge success of Disney's live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, new versions of Dumbo, Aladdin, The Lion King, and Mulan are all headed to theaters.